[SPOILERS] Bacchus and India's many gods

[Bacchus]

Slinger finally manages to chase down the scout and put the final, third shot into him for the Archery eureka. This is very useful (25 beakers). The warrior in the south discovers the remaining two prerequisites for Bronze Working (kill 3 barbs):




The settler actually completes in 4 turns due to extra cogs from a newly grown pop, alas that prevents me from sandbagging growth to coincide with settler completion.

There is a camp to clear (yields Military Tradition inspiration, gold) to boot. Another camp spawned to the south-west of the capital, but quite far away and I have my second warrior there to deal with nuisance. The whole camp mechanic is really nice -- once you've scouted the map, barbs never come out of the blue, so you can reposition your meager forces to deal with the threat.

Also note the 5-yield tiles (unimproved) next to the slinger in the east. These are jungled hill bananas, alongside spices the best tiles in the game. It is pretty clear that my Pantheon will be Oral Tradition by this stage. There is an excellent spot to found that banana city, a coastal river plains hill (2 cogs city tile). Here's the settler overlay for clarity.




To help even more, Brussels is keeping that entire area free of barbs. My plan is to rush to colonization and cover this amazing land in cities ASAP. In one of the cities, I need to find time to build Henge though -- I want a religion, but I don't want to build holy sites yet, as they will be built around Pantanal, which let's me build two HS's with +4 faith from adjacency from the Natural Wonder alone.

Summary: I am in isolation with fantastic land and will be running a huge farmer's gambit.

[Bacchus]

Tile picker chooses citrus, which lets me grow one turn faster without losing production (gaining half a beaker and a third of a clef), always pleasant. Alas, Civ6 still doesn't appear to tell you how much food is in a city's bin and how much is required for growth. And why would it, it's not as if growing pop in cities is core to this game. Anyway, I should be first to 4 pop -- currently everyone's Empire score is 8, seems everyone is at 3 and no-one has built a settler yet.

Builder moves off to the prospected city site in the west -- I want to open its queue with a monument and build it fast, as I'm still dead last in culture. The chop should yield around 30 cogs, half the cost, and the thing should be built in 6-7 turns.

In the east, barb warrior expectedly runs himself into my forested warrior, loses just under half it's health. I will stay in place and heal, awaiting another attack, and then finish it off, and move towards the camp. Slinger moves onto the banana, to open up some more tiles, and will now make his way back to the capital.

We are breaking up for a while whilst suboptimal is off for some quality time with the family.

[Bacchus]

T23

Barbarian warrior runs himself into my wooded warrior again, and dies, leaving my unit with 6XP. I will heal him up for another turn and move towards the camp to clear the spear. I'm feeling good about not rushing to Agoge, as the +5 against from Discipline is likely to remain very relevant in my situation for a while yet.

In the core, Delhi grows to 4 pop and becomes the largest city in the world (I'm the only player with an Empire score of 9). It now has a cool +12 cogs base output, and will knock out a settler in two turns exactly. After dropping to 3 I will re-grow to 4 using the citrus, whilst building a Monument with a +2 bonus from Brussels. Monuments are huge, as it takes 7 pop to make as much culture per turn as does a single one of them. The monuments will help me along to Early Empire and it's excellent +50% cogs on settlers.




Strategic overview for an up-to-date high-level picture:



Annoyingly, even at highest pop level, I am still last on culture -- everyone has extraneous sources of culture. Kaiser already has 3 civics, whilst the rest of us are still on one, though, I assume people are waiting for boosts to trigger Craftsmanship/Foreign Trade. The latter tells me that everyone is in Kazakhstania, and maybe quite deep into it. I still have no contacts.

[TheArchduke]

Not much to say, Bacchus, I think the worker going to your 2nd city to chop a monument is a nice place.

Any decision on a naming sheme yet?

[Bacchus]

Our settler is ready, so is someone else's (empire score at 7, drop in population seemingly). Scout sets off north-west. Otherwise not much to report, Kaiser is running away in score, largely based on the civic attainments. We get Foreign Trade next turn.

[Bacchus]

Will update in a couple more turns, when new city is founded. Early Empire takes a hilarious 37 turns when I start it, but a monument in the capital (4 turns to completion) will half it to 18, and then the Inspiration to 9. The capital needs something to build for a couple of turns before EE comes in, it will probably be builders.

Warrior promoted to Battlecry down below, will clear camp next turn. Then will move to clear another camp.

[Bacchus]

I am toying with the idea of a tourism victory. The basic mechanics are as follows: there is a set of things which generate "Tourism", which in turn turns into a foreign tourist from each civ you have met, when you accumulate some large enough chunk, after modifiers (Open borders +25%, Trade route sent +25%). You have to generate more "foreign tourists" than any one other player has "domestic tourists", and the latter are generated in chunks simply through culture. Chunks are unequally sized, for domestic tourists the size of the chunk is always 100, i.e. for each 100 culture you generate, you get a domestic tourist. For the foreign tourists, the chunk is 150 * number of civs, but because the tourism you generate goes towards all civs you have met, that number effectively cancels out. Basically you win, once your lifetime tourism becomes bigger than the highest rival's lifetime culture a factor of 1.5. Because everybody generates culture from turn 1, and tourism only picks up later in the game, this means that you must produce something like 3 times the culture per-turn of your best rival in the later game, to catch up on the lag. In other words, tourism victory is a way to punish underinvestment in culture.

This is exactly what pushed me to consider this approach. My rivals all have civs with a strong military flavour -- America gets an outright military bonus, Japan builds fast encampments, England gets free units, England and Arabia have excellent unique units, America has a good one too. None of them has a particularly cultural flavour, except maybe Japan, which also builds fast theatre squares, but with abundance of religious city states that we have, and with encampments being as great as they are, I think Japan will have other priorities. Not only that, I know from my early scouting that the other four civs are apparently packed into half a pangea, together with 8 city states. That's very tight. Very good for America, because unless there is a third continent, everyone but me is within Kazakhstania. Very good for America, also very good for me. Overall I expect the level of military tension to be very high in the west, which will leave few spare cogs for theatre squares, which are just shit districts overall. Unless you are the only one building them

Now, what are the mechanics of tourism victory? There is a beeline, which is entirely within the civics tree, as you would expect, which goes Mercantilism -> Colonialism -> Natural History -> Conservation. NH unlocks archaelogists and the ability to extract artifacts, which are placed in museums to give 3 tourism per turn, 6 when themed. Conservation lets you build naturalists at 800 faith a pop, which create national parks, which are 4-tile improvements which provide as much tourism as the sum of the appeal of tiles its placed on, and appeal is provided by natural wonders (+2 per adjacency), wonders, humanistic districts and woods, mountains, coast (all +1 adjacency). Now, that means that Pantanal tiles, which I have, will let me make two national parks for ~20 tourism each. As long as I don't let them get pillaged, that should be enough to propel me to victory. Before these, the main source of tourism are Great Works of Writing, these babies provide 4 per turn, which gets +100% with Printing. With open borders and trade routes that could mean 10 tourism per turn after Printing, and each Writer makes 2 works, so 20. Three Writers -- and it's possible to snap up the tourism victory even before Conservation.

Holy city and wonders also yield some tourism, but it's not meaningful.

[TheArchduke]

From my gut I would say how could one possibly win as open borders and trade routes are easily closed off at war and are very important for a tourism victory.

But then again, PBEM #2 managed to get Alhambram a religious victory courtesy of DoFs, so what do I know.

I would actually leave Religion and Holy Sites alone as if you need cultural districts as well you will quickly run out of slots for the economic districts like CH, I.

But you certainly got the strategic position for such a victory.

[Bacchus]

Overview:



Camp cleared for Bronze Working and Military Tradition inspirations and 50 gold. Warrior will now proceed west. Slinger is fogbusting. Scout about to see what's on the other side of Hattusa.

Settling map:



Southern river should be fairly uncontested and will house the wonders due to the great amount of cogs stored in resources and features there. To the east, there is that lovely spot on the coast just beyond Brussels. Then, there is the north with Pantanal. I still haven't found tundra there, and moreover the eastern coast kind of protrudes to the north-east, so there could be another civ on the other side of the Pantanal. However, the region lacks freshwater, which makes it unattractive for a settling race, but very suitable for India, which can plonk down a farm and two stepwells for a decent boost to the housing cap.

In other news, everyone but me has generated 1 domestic tourist, so accumulated a total 100 lifetime culture. I am behind in culture per turn, and also lack the inspiration for Mysticism, which is probably at the heart of the matter.

[Bacchus]

Some districting and settling thoughts:




Legend: Diamonds are core city sites, triangle is a later filler, H is Henge, C is Colosseum, other letters are mostly self-explanatory districts. In the south-west some fuckery is required. The major city will build Harbor and Theatre square, whilst the filler will build the commercial hub, so that everyone gets trade routes.